St Mark's Summit: The Classic Howe Sound Crest Trail Day Hike
The best full-day hike reachable from Vancouver without a ferry or a forest service road, and worth every one of the 460 metres. Just do not go on a Saturday, and do not go in winter unless you own a transceiver and know how to read a slope.
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Quick facts
- Distance
- 11 km
- Elevation gain
- 460 m
- Highest point
- 1,355 m
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time needed
- 4-6 hours
- Route type
- Out and back
- Season
- Roughly July to October. Snow lingers on the north-facing sections well into June most years, and the route is a genuine avalanche objective from the first storm to the last.
- Drive from Vancouver
- 45 min
- Transit accessible
- Yes
- Dog friendly
- Yes
- Pass or permit
- No pass requiredNo BC Parks day-use pass is required for Cypress. As of the 2026 season the only BC Parks day-pass sites are Joffre Lakes, Garibaldi and Golden Ears in summer and Mount Seymour in winter. Cypress is not on either list, which is the single most common thing people get wrong when planning this hike. Parking at Cypress is free of charge year-round in the designated areas.
- Last hiked
- Traditional territory
- Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory
On this page4 sections
St Mark's Summit is the hike I recommend to people who have done Quarry Rock and the Grouse Grind and want to know what the North Shore is actually like. It is 11 kilometres, 460 metres of climbing, and it ends on open bluffs at roughly 1,355 metres with Howe Sound dropping away to the north-west. Nothing else this close to Vancouver gives you that much alpine for that little driving.
It is also, on a summer Saturday, one of the busiest trails in the province. Both things are true and you should plan around the second one.
The route
From the Cypress Bowl downhill lots, walk north past the Cypress Creek Lodge buildings to the wooden trail-map sign at the far end of the pavement. The Howe Sound Crest Trail starts there. The first few hundred metres feel like a ski-area service road because they are one, and then the trail turns into the forest and stays there for most of the day.
The junction to know is early. About two kilometres in, a signed spur breaks left to Bowen Lookout. If you have never been, take the 300-metre detour on the way back, not on the way out. It is a genuinely good viewpoint and it costs you fifteen minutes.
Past that, the HSCT settles into its character: a rolling, root-bound, rock-stepped trail that climbs, loses thirty metres, climbs again, and repeats. This is why the cumulative gain is 460 metres when the difference between the parking lot and the summit is closer to 430. It is also why people who read "460 metres" and expect a staircase find the second half harder than the number suggests. The footing is the work here, not the gradient. Wet roots and polished granite slabs after rain are the reason most of the injuries on this trail are ankles.
Around the four-kilometre mark the forest opens and you start getting glimpses west. The last kilometre is the best part of the hike and the part that gets photographed least, because there are openings on the crest where the Lions rise to your north-east above the ridge. Most people put their heads down here to finish. Do not.
The summit itself is a set of open bluffs rather than a peak. There are two main ledges separated by a short step, and the upper one has the drop. Howe Sound is directly below, Bowen Island fills the middle distance, and the Sunshine Coast headlands stack away to the north-west. The Lions are behind and above you, which genuinely surprises people who came expecting them to be the view.
The crowd problem, honestly
This is the most popular non-resort trailhead on the North Shore in summer. The Cypress downhill lots are big, but between St Mark's, Eagle Bluffs, Black Mountain and the Yew Lake crowd they fill early. On a clear August Saturday the near lots are gone by about 8:30am and by ten you are parking a long walk out. Sunday is marginally better. Any weekday is a different mountain.
The trail itself absorbs people surprisingly well because it is long and the forest is enclosed, but the bluffs do not. Twenty or thirty people on a fifteen-metre ledge on a summer afternoon is normal. If you want it quiet, start at seven or start at three.
Winter: this is avalanche terrain
I want to be blunt about this because the trail's easy summer reputation gets people into trouble.
BC Parks strongly discourages winter travel along the Howe Sound Crest Trail past Bowen Lookout. That is not liability language. The HSCT traverses steep, open, north-west-facing slopes above Howe Sound, the trail markers that guide you in summer are buried or absent in winter, and the route crosses terrain where a slide will take you a very long way downhill. This is not the Dog Mountain situation where the trail is safe and the surroundings are not. Here the trail itself is the exposure.
Check the Avalanche Canada North Shore forecast at avalanche.ca before any winter attempt, and understand that a forecast is the beginning of the decision, not the end of it. If you are not carrying a transceiver, probe and shovel with people who know how to use them, this is not a winter objective for you. Bowen Lookout, two kilometres in, is where the sensible winter turnaround is, and it is a good one.
The shoulder seasons matter too. Snow lingers on the shaded sections into late June most years, and a firm, side-sloping patch of old snow across a steep trail has hurt more people here than avalanches have.
Practical notes
No day-use pass is needed for Cypress. This is worth repeating because Mount Seymour does require one in winter and people assume the two parks work the same way. They do not. Parking is free year-round in the designated lots.
Dogs are allowed on the Howe Sound Crest Trail and must be leashed. I would not take a dog past the summit bluffs: the trail toward Unnecessary Mountain and the Lions gets rocky and exposed in ways that are hard on paws and harder on judgement.
There is no water on the route and no reliable shade at the bluffs. Carry more than you think, and carry a windproof layer even in August, because the bluffs are 1,355 metres up and open to the sound.
Trail notes from the field
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Shooting this trail
Photography notes
- Best light
- Late afternoon into sunset. The bluffs face roughly west and north-west down Howe Sound, so the sun sets straight into your composition over the Sunshine Coast and the light rakes across the water for the last hour before it goes. That is also the problem: you are 5.5 km and 460 m from the car when it happens. Either commit to a headlamp descent on a rooty, rocky trail, or accept mid-afternoon side light, which is honestly still good because the sound stays backlit and hazy from about 3pm on. Morning is the weak option here. The bluffs are in shade and you are shooting into flat, cold light.
- Best season
- September and early October. The trail is dry, the biting insects are done, the crowds thin out after Labour Day, and marine haze in Howe Sound separates the headlands into clean receding layers.
- Compositions
- The Howe Sound layers at 70-135mm. From the main bluff, the sound recedes north-west past Bowen Island, Gambier, Keats and the Sunshine Coast headlands. Compression is the whole shot: a long lens stacks four or five ridgelines into flat bands of decreasing contrast. Wait for haze rather than fighting it. Shoot into the light about ninety minutes before sunset and the bands separate on their own.
- The Lions from the trail, not from the summit. This is the composition people get wrong. The classic Lions view is not at the bluffs, it is from openings on the last kilometre of trail before them, where the West Lion rises above the ridge to your north-east. Shoot at 35-70mm with a section of the crest trail or a foreground snag for scale. Go back for this on the descent when the sun has moved west and the Lion is side-lit rather than flat.
- The bluff edge as a foreground at 16-24mm. There are two main open ledges separated by a short scramble, and the lower one gives you weathered rock and stunted mountain hemlock to build a foreground with the sound falling away behind. Small aperture, focus about a third in, and keep the horizon out of the dead centre.
- Vertical panorama for the drop. The bluffs sit high above the water with very little between you and it. A stitched vertical at 35mm, three frames, captures the full 1,300 m of relief in a way a single horizontal never does.
- Gear
- A 70-200mm earns its weight on this trail more than a wide angle does, which is not true of most North Shore hikes. Bring a headlamp regardless of your plan, because a sunset shoot means descending a wet, root-laced forest trail in the dark and the ambient light in that forest goes forty minutes before the sky does. Nowhere on the bluffs is sheltered, and the wind funnels up the sound, so a lens cloth matters more than a filter kit. There is no water on the route: carry it all.
From the trail
